Worst Exhibit You've Ever Seen

AlmightyKingPrawn

AlmightyKingPrawn

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
What is the worst exhibit you've ever seen, be it at an accredited facility or a roadside hellhole? My dad convinced me to go to the Indian Creek Zoo on a weekend and most of it was just ok as far as unaccredited places go, I have great memories of cuddling a free roaming great pyrenees, but this rhesus macaque exhibit dampened the whole experience.

Rhesus Macaque Exhibit (the entire exhibit!) - ZooChat

My dad tried to convince me that it wasn't it's full living quarters and that zoos must have regulations against this, but I think I know better. So sad.
 
When i think about it, im happy to say that most of the zoos i visited had no terrible exhibits, even though there are still some bad ones, probably the worst i can think of right now is the by now demolished exhibit for sumatran orang utans in the Erlebnis-Zoo Hannover. It only had a tiny outdoor cage but most of the time the orang utans were indoor anyways, which was a pretty small concrete enclosure with atleast a few climbing possibilities.
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/drill-indoors-afi-mountain.473490/full?d=1578309790
This is the indoor enclosure, in that photo used by drills

https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/orang-utan-outdoor-exhibit.19048/full?d=0
And this is the outdoor exhibit
 
Butterfly Gardens of Wisconsin is mostly an excellent facility, except for this enclosure. I saw it one visit and then it was gone a week and a half later. I don't know if it was just temporary or if the entire thing was moved bts or what, but here it is:

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Paul Kalisch said:
When i think about it, im happy to say that most of the zoos i visited had no terrible exhibits, even though there are still some bad ones, probably the worst i can think of right now is the by now demolished exhibit for sumatran orang utans in the Erlebnis-Zoo Hannover. It only had a tiny outdoor cage but most of the time the orang utans were indoor anyways, which was a pretty small concrete enclosure with atleast a few climbing possibilities.
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/drill-indoors-afi-mountain.473490/full?d=1578309790
This is the indoor enclosure, in that photo used by drills

https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/orang-utan-outdoor-exhibit.19048/full?d=0
And this is the outdoor exhibit
Click to expand...
That Drill exhibit doesn't look bad. The orang one is definitely small though, I hope their indoor area is larger.
 
I can't remember much or very clearly, but a lot of the cages at Jungle Cat World are real small, like only as big as a handful of square metres, and quite barren, the snow leopard pen in particular.
 
I can hardly remember this since i think i was like, 5 or 6 at the time but there was this zoo in China, and the only thing i remember from it was an asiatic black bear enclosure, there was glass at the front and it was just a concrete box with i think a tiny pool in the middle, i dont know about the offshow so it might possibly be better.
 
I haven't really seen that many bad exhibits, but dolphin exhibits are usually pretty bad, mainly space issues. The Osaka Aquarium's dolphin exhibit is nicer than most, naturally decorated and stuff, but seemed small. I'm generally not a fan of keeping cetaceans anyway. The Tokyo Sea Life Park was very good, the only thing was an octopus tank that seemed a little small. I don't really know much about cephalopod husbandry, so I don't really know.
 

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Now that I think of it, the Osaka Aquarium had a weird exhibit with various species in tanks solely decorated with plastic toys, marbles, stuff like that. A couple species that require live rock for grazing, like moorish idols and mandarinfish, were kept in mostly bare tanks with no rocks and active swimmers like tangs were in tiny tanks. There was a tiny biorb-type tank, couldn't have been any more than 5 litres, with about 10 pea puffers. Most of the aquarium was amazing, but that area was a little bit sad. Also the ringed seal exhibit was pretty small.
 
TBH I haven't seen that many bad zoo exhibits. Probably the worst I ever saw were some of the old exhibits at Omaha Zoo. As far as current ones go, I'd say the orangutan exhibit at the Pittsburgh zoo, as it doesn't provide enough climbing opportunities, is all indoors, and just doesn't provide sufficient room for the 2 animals, thus making it pretty bad.
 
There's a lot to choose at Donnersberg Tierpark in Rockenhausen, Germany

F.e. stapled mammal exhibits:

52483738444_95de879f79_k.jpg


Or this luxury location for white-fronted lemur in their Tropical House.

52483924750_91e05abe57_h.jpg
 
I've seen many horrible roadside zoo exhibits during my travels across America. I could probably list 100 examples, but here are three awful enclosures and each photo shows the entire space given to the inhabitants.

North American Black Bear in a tiny, barren cage at Clay Center Zoo (Kansas) in 2014:

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Asian Water Monitor at The Reptile Zoo (California) in 2017:

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American Badger at Bear Den Zoo (Wisconsin) in 2018:

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Guam has some absolutely awful exhibits for their animals

Guam Zoo is horrid. I visited once when I lived on the island and that was enough. The Philippine deer and water buffalo exhibits barley had dirt, they were just slabs of concrete that the animals stood on for long periods of time. The crab eating macaque cage was dismal, and the sea turtle and shark tank was almost black it was so murky. Truly a depressing zoo.

A nature park on the island called Valley of the Latte has a few small animal exhibits. There was a single Philippine deer in a tiny chain link cage. It was almost the size of a closet. The roof was tin so no sunlight came through.

Hopefully conditions for both parks have changed, as it's been five or six years since I last visited, but I really wish Guam had a proper zoo, it's sad that this might be the only zoo people see for years or their life depending on how long they live on the island.
 
The infamous trippy forest-like, all-indoor orangutan exhibit at the Birmingham Zoo in Alabama. The exhibit can best be described as a dungeon with hideous fake trees and plastic play equipment. Ironically, the pair of apes BRED in this exhibit a few years back!
 
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